Sinking Deep - Epiphanies

Editor’s Note: I committed to share my journey to hopefully help those who are on a similar journey with depression.  I have to admit, I’ve been hesitant to do this because the last thing I want is anyone to feel sorry for me.  I especially feel this way today after attending the Gala-4-Gold to benefit the Amanda Riley Foundation, which helps those children and families battling childhood cancer.  Twelve Riley Warriors lost their lives so far this year.  If you ever want to feel sorry for someone, do it for children like this or their families.  I just can’t imagine.  But, I’m committed to help at least one person with my blog posts.  After my last post, one person did reach out to me, and that made me feel good.  If I can help at least one person with my journey then I will feel like I’ve succeeded.  So the journey continues…

Oh, the irony.

For those who read my last blog post, “Sinking Deep(er)”, I noted that I had been begrudgingly convinced by Megan Kearney and Karl Sparklin that maybe it was time to seek counseling to deal with my latest plunges into depression.  As I noted, I’m really not a fan of counseling, I hadn’t had good experience with it.

Flash forward to last week, I’m in Brazil, and I see that after my upcoming counseling appointment with Hailey, I can’t get in again until September 20, almost a month later.  I quickly panic, and immediately schedule three appointments to get onto the schedule before the opportunity slips away. 

Yes, my attitude has changed.  I’ve been going to counseling for about seven weeks, and I’ve loved it.  Now, don’t get me wrong, it has definitely had its ebb and flow, and I’ve plunged deeply a few times after exploring some very difficult topics, but overall, this experience has been overwhelmingly successful.

I’ve also had a few epiphanies along the way about what I’m experiencing, and I’d like to share those.

The Hot Air Balloon Effect

Many years ago, Laurel and I took a hot air balloon ride in the countryside of France.  It was a magical experience, but not without its panic-filled moments for me.  As we took off, and as we landed, when I could see the trees, rivers, houses, churches, I was fine.  When we got way up in the air, I started to panic.  I tried to rationally tell myself, this is silly, if you were fine 100 feet off the ground, you should be fine 1,000 feet off the ground, either way, if you fell or something happened, you’d die, so you are having an irrational fear.  Yeah, that didn’t work.  My rational mind couldn’t convince my emotional mind to settle down.

I realized that this is the same thing I face when I have irrational fears now.  I’ve found that for whatever reason, I seem to have these more often when I travel long distances away, like to South America.  Now, it may be the long flights, the lack of sleep, sitting in a hotel room all by myself, but whatever it is, my emotional mind takes over, and I can’t get my rational mind to convince it that, well, it’s being irrational.

The latest was last week in Brazil, it started harmlessly enough, one of the dogs was sick, most likely Daisy, and I was texting back and forth with Laurel about it.  At one point, she said it was probably due to too many treats.  I took that as a shot at me, since I’m the one who gives them too many treats, so I sent a smart-ass comment back.  The next morning, I tried texting Laurel and then calling to no avail.  My emotional mind took over.  I started thinking, she’s mad at me.  Then I started thinking, Daisy died.  Then I started thinking, Laurel was kidnapped or died or ….. I resorted to what I try to avoid, but do out of desperation, I started texting the kids, “Have you talked to your Mom?”  I finally reached Laurel, and her reaction was as is usual, “Worrying won’t help the situation, it won’t do any good.”  Easy for her to say, incredibly hard for me to execute.

This has been a repetitive pattern for me, as noted, particularly when I travel far away.  Similar to the hot air balloon incident, I try to tell myself, if I were 50 miles away or 5,000 miles away, there’s not much I can do if something has gone horribly wrong.  Again, that hasn’t worked, my rational mind hasn’t been able to convince my emotional mind that it’s being irrational.

Hailey has been working with me on coping skills.  She suggests either lean into the irrational fears, embrace them and basically confront them, or distract yourself from them.  Since the fears I’m having are too life-changing and devastating, I haven’t confronted them, but I have been working on distracting myself, with at least limited success.  I’m still a work in progress.

The Heart of the Matter

It’s about forgiveness.  And yet, once again, I can’t seem to get my rational mind and emotional mind to work together on this one (by the way, Hailey says when I’m able to, that is the wise mind, but as usual, I digress).

One of my favorite moments this year at our Small Group Retreat was when Nike Nihiser said he still remembers what I said on his wedding day.  Nike had been divorced, he was marrying a wonderful person in Jane, and I told him how happy I was for him, but more so how good it felt to see him so happy.  And then I told him, everyone deserves a second chance in life.

Fast forward to some of my conversations with Hailey, and she’s asked me if I forgive others when they’ve done something wrong to me?  I tell her of course, we all make mistakes, we’re human.  She then asks, does that apply to me?  In the immortal words of Hamlet, “Ay, there’s the rub!”

To be honest, it’s not everything in life, and that’s where it gets a bit interesting.  In many areas of my life, I do believe I deserve forgiveness, but there are three areas where I really struggle, and yes, I need to work through.  One, is with my Dad.  My Dad was the greatest cheerleader a child could have, he was always positive and seeing the good in what I had done, but I just can’t, or won’t, see where I’ve treated him well.  Two, it’s my children, I can remember virtually every nasty or ill-tempered comment I’ve made to them throughout our lives together.  As my brother Jim would say, words are like bullets, once they’re out, you can’t get them back, and the damage is done.  Three, and most importantly, and most painful for me is how I treated Laurel.  As many know I left her for a brief period about 30 years ago, I was nasty to her, I was awful.  I’m struggling to accept what I did.

I’ll be honest, I’m not sure I can ever forgive myself, or as Hailey rightfully points out to me, “You can, it’s a matter of if you will”.  This will take time, but the reality is that I’ve carried this guilt and pain for 30 years, and I just don’t know if I will let it go.  I keep going back to something one of the greatest theologians I know, Catherine Foster, said to me a few years ago on this topic:

“Now, like me, you might feel that you only hold yourself to a higher standard. But I've discovered in myself that this is my desire to boot God from the seat of judgment and place myself there. God may forgive me, but I'm going to keep punishing myself for as long as I feel necessary.  I've learned that this is both pride/hubris and also terrible theology. The solution to sin is not punishment, but reconciliation. My task upon realizing my sin is not guilt but the even harder work of opening myself to repair the breach.”

Wow, spot on.  Now if I could just get my rational brain to convince my emotional brain of this….

What the Hell Happened?

I look back to some of my blog posts from 2017, and that was probably the best place I’ve ever been when it comes to spirituality, emotions and my mental state.  I probably had come the closest I’ve ever come to being able to accept myself for who I am.  As Hailey points out to me there is a distinction between viewing yourself as a good person who has done bad things or viewing yourself as a bad person.  Again, when I’m rational, I can see the difference, but unfortunately there are times, I can’t, OK won’t, see the distinction.  I’m not sure what has happened in those two short years to bring me to this place, but I need to figure out how to get back again to a better place.  I’m exhausting myself continually boomeranging between depression and anxiety, and I just can’t keep doing this.

Going full circle to my panic with not being able to schedule appointments for about a month and one of the reasons I like Hailey so much is that she said to me “You’ll be fine, you have great coping skills.  My job is to work my way out of a job, we need to get to the point where you don’t need to come see me anymore, and we’ll get there.”  I like her, I trust her, and I believe in her.  To me, that is critical to have a healthy working relationship with a counselor. 

And going full circle to my comments about not wanting people to feel sorry for me.  I don’t, I don’t deserve it, there are many people out there who do.  But I really do appreciate how so many people have been so supportive as I’ve shared my journey.  Whether it’s little comments, private messages, words of encouragement, they do mean so much.  Just knowing people care, that makes all the difference in the world.  I’m still not sure I will allow myself to forgive myself, to remove myself from the judgment seat, but I’m so thankful that there are so many of you who seem to be able to accept me for who I am.